Keeping his eyes on the birdies

MARSHALL – When Alex Peterson came home from a business trip to find a robin’s nest under the eaves of his house he did what any video nerd would do: He set up a streaming video.

Peterson operates Video Magic Productions as a sideline business with his wife Allison, filming mostly weddings and events and some media conversion for customers’ old VHS collections. He also has surveillance cameras around his house.

“I noticed the nest on Friday, May 10,” Peterson said. “I was gone for a week on a work trip to L.A., saw the nest with nothing in it and thought, “Cool, I’m a video nerd, let’s do something.'”

While the momma robin was away, Peterson moved a video camera a few feet and focused it on the nest, a job which took all of five minutes. The camera feeds into his computer and is uploaded onto ustream.tv

“I noticed the first egg on Monday the 13th, then one more on the next two days, and stuck on three,” Peterson said.

After doing a little research on robins, Peterson said he expects the first to hatch early next week, perhaps as early as Monday.

Anyone interested can follow the hatching and watch the young being raised here www.ustream.tv/channel/live-robins-nest